Chapter Seven: Stockholm Syndrome

Tommy was seething. He was practically on fire like Hades in the Disney Hercules movie when Hercules had managed to take out all the monsters the Lord of the Underworld was hurling at him.

He wasn’t pacing or yelling. He was just sitting on the couch with his feet planted firmly on the ground, expression stoic. The moment we stepped in, a hardcover book came flying in our direction. I was out of line and Kieran dodged it but it hit Adriel square in the face. The dogs were nowhere to be seen, presumably in hiding because Tommy brought out fear in absolutely every living creature he encountered. I was willing to bet plants could bend and quiver in his presence.

That was just me. I was the one who was afraid, therefore I was painting him in the light of a monster. Deservedly so, too.

“Fuck,” Adriel breathed, voice stuffy, hand over his nose and mouth. I winced despite being untouched.

“I’ve been calling. Neither of you answered,” Tommy said in a measured voice. I shrunk back when I saw his face, hiding behind Kieran. Tommy already looked like a Death Lord with his usual face. Now that he was pissed, he looked exactly the same. . . except a hundred times more terrifying. He caught sight of the bags we were holding.

“Shopping?” Then his gaze zeroed in on Kieran, or, more accurately, me. “Where is she?”

In a flash, he was in front of Kieran, yanking me out from behind my human shield, pulling me close to himself by my shirt front. His knife appeared, pressing against my neck. The whole exchange was rough and sudden. My fear was heightened by a hundredfold, stomach churning uncomfortably. That brief respite from fearing my death when we were at the mall seemed like centuries ago. In fact, I was having a hard time believing it even happened at all. Someone had merely woken me up from a dream: in reality, I had been here all along. Waiting for my life to be taken from me.

“Whoa, Tommy.” Kieran turned and put a hand on his leader’s arm while trying to wrestle me away from him like I was a rag doll. “Calm down. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Tommy’s eyes flashed as Kieran spoke. I gulped, praying that he would be able to talk some sense into his fuming friend. Oh, man, I was in such a rotten pickle that I had to depend on the comrades of my would-be killer to spare my life? Kieran’s grip on Tommy’s arm tightened concurrently with the latter applying more pressure to his knife. I kept my eyes wide open, staring at him despite the obvious terror I was in, skin already tingling in anticipation of the pain that was to come. I was afraid that if I closed them, I'd see blood when I opened them. Tommy held my gaze for a minute longer, seemingly at war with himself. Behind us, Adriel was trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose with his shirtsleeve.

Adriel was his friend. If he already treated his friends like this, who’s to say what he was going to do to me, the victim of his target?

Dear God, I’m too young to die. I still have that packet of gummy worms sitting on my desk at home! It was on clearance. At least grant me the liberty of going home and finishing that first. Then I can go in peace.

In the end, Tommy lowered his knife. His hold on my shirt however, maintained.

“Gear up,” he growled to Kieran. Then, readjusting his hold on me, he hauled me upstairs, back into the room – my room. The one I spent hours being tortured in. Never had I felt so utterly useless as when I was stumbling in his wake, anchored forcefully to him by him.

“I never should’ve listened to Adriel,” he mumbled, shoving me down on the bed and retying my wrists. He pulled the rope so tight that the skin there started to sting again.

“Tommy, please.” I wasn't sure what possessed me to use his name. Tears leaked out of the corner of my eyes, an involuntary action triggered by fear. I couldn’t take any more torture, not when he was angry. The air around me seemed void of oxygen as I struggled to pull in deep breaths.

My pleading didn't work this time. I would have been better off just keeping my mouth shut. Tommy leaned down, his nose nearly touching mine. I turned my face away and shut my eyes, feeling that even if I so much as looked at him, I was dead meat.

“Look at me, princess.”

He only had to say it once. I had to respect the guy a little. He instilled fear into me yet I was unable to defy a direct command from him. Probably because of the fear.

“You’re lucky you have those two to back you up,” he said in a low voice, eyes flashing. “Extremely lucky.”

With that, he left, slamming the door after him.

Once again, I was in confinement. It didn’t take a blind man to see how erratic Tommy’s behavior was. If he was just a regular bad guy, I could live with it. Crazy people were trending these days. Unluckily for me, he wasn't the typical crazy or conventionally bad. He had to be one of those mafia dudes. Climbed to the top by killing and conquering, gained respect for his ruthlessness, famed for his spontaneous mood changes. All the traits of someone you should never get tangled up with.

Despite the other two’s tolerable attitude towards me, Tommy sealed the deal. I had to get out of here. Right now, I’d rather be starved and stranded with sickly strays than wait for Tommy to come back and take his anger out on me.

I waited a reasonable amount of time to make sure no one was in the house. Didn't want to break free just to get caught. Also, there was a period of time there where I was limply pathetic. My brain just wouldn't issue commands and my body refused to cooperate. I assumed it was shock so I rode it out. But once command center was back in control, my reasoning got a little messy. Desperate to get out of these binds, I concentrated all my energy on my wrists, pulling myself up into a sitting position with help by digging my heels into the mattress. The stinging soreness was a distraction; I couldn’t move my arms without feeling the slightest pain and I had sapped my remaining energy by disturbing the wounds on my abdomen. Grimacing, I tried leaning to my left in an attempt to chew the ropes off or at least, get them a little loose. But if I moved to the left, my restraints would tug at my right wrist, sending fire up my arm. Vice versa.

I groaned loudly, my head falling back against the headboard. At the sound of the thud the headboard made when it came into contact with my head, an idea popped into my head: I could try to loosen the headboard, possibly dismantle it. As unlikely as it may have sounded, it was better than sitting around and waiting for Mr. Psycho to get back. I wasn’t prey. I was a survivor and I’d be such a loser if I allowed a maniac to take my life from me.

“Bad idea,” I winced, running my tongue over my bleeding lip. My plan didn't carry out as well in reality as it did in my head, proving that I had watched one too many action movies. I had been moving against the headboard – shaking, jumping, hitting, yanking and whatever else you can think of – for the past ten minutes, accidentally biting my own lip in the process. Status report: a flaming, bleeding torso and wrists that hurt so bad I was unconsciously crying.

My attempts to escape were futile. Hell, if only I hadn't held on to that sliver of hope that I could escape then maybe I wouldn't be feeling like such a failure now. Anyone with a pair of working eyes could see that there was no escape. Wherever it was that the guys had gone off to, Tommy had made sure I would be here when he inevitably returned. I slumped down against the headboard in defeat, hopelessness deflating me quicker than a balloon.

“Spare my soul!” I cried out in exaggerated travail, lifting my eyes heavenwards, or ceiling-wards.

Alone here, in an unknown location with three – possibly more – gangsters, time didn’t seem like an important factor to me anymore. In fact, it went by just like grains of sand flowing through someone’s fingers. I realized that I must be losing my marbles.

“Hey, are you awake?”

Kieran’s soft voice came from the door. My hooded eyes shot wide open.

“Oi!”

He quickly closed the door, bringing a long finger to his lips. I presumed Adriel was the one who would come up since he'd been the one handling that task when I first arrived but anyone other than Tommy would do right now.

“Shh, stay quiet. I’m not supposed to be in here.”

Pfft, yeah that's what the first guy said.

Kieran looked about warily before plonking down by my side, the bed dipping towards him at the uneven weight distribution. He reached over me and untied the ropes that had been the cause of my suffering and discomfort for the past . . .

“How long have you all been gone?” I inquired, as though this were not a hostage situation.

“Three hours, give or take,” he shrugged. “Oh, we stopped by KFC for a quick bite so that makes it . . .” Kieran counted his fingers, “. . . four hours."

. . . four hours. Nice.

I couldn’t believe they had time to stop for food when they had locked a person up against her own will at their house. How could they work up an appetite, knowing they were keeping someone against their will? Unless, they were used to it.

My fingers were numb, so were my forearms but to have my wrists freed from the rough ropes was relieving.

“I am so sorry about what happened earlier,” Kieran began. He took my right hand first, gingerly dabbing at the raw skin with a wet cloth that he’d magically produced out of nowhere. “You must have been terrified.”

“What he said,” I muttered, watching his hands work.

All Kieran did was nod slowly then he kept quiet, focusing on my wrists. I was sat in front of him, my hand in his lap.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

"Thanks.”

I meant it. The guy could have just ignored me, treated me like every other person they (again, I'm assuming here) had kidnapped. He did call me fat. Instead, he took it upon himself to walk up those stupid stairs and sneak in here. Not to wound me with more insults.

I found it hard to hold grudges when people acted differently.

At my word of gratitude, the brunette’s hand stopped its movements. My own rested snugly in his grip. I didn’t bother pulling it away.

"Be patient with Tommy, yeah?" Kieran said to me in an unusually soft voice. I blinked, surprised at the emotion behind his simple words. "He's a fucked up bastard but underneath it all he's still human."

"Are you sure?" Because humans don't mess other humans up like this. Respectable humans, anyway.

Kieran chuckled darkly at my skepticism. "No. We're working on him, okay? Just..." He tugged lightly at my hand, searching for the right words. "Trust me. And Adriel. We'll make sure you don't get killed."

Well that's some consolation that didn't work. Trust didn't work that way. Trust could never work if the person initiating it had broken it upon first meeting. He was obviously only saying this because I resembled a broken, lost puppy.

"How about helping me escape?"

"No chance.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out after another stretch of silence. Kieran’s visage held a questioning look.

“For earlier on,” I explained. “It was because of me you guys took so long.”

“Don’t bother,” he said, grin returning. The earlier tenderness with which he talked about his leader had gone, regular personality re-establishing itself. “Tommy's anger is routine. He’s broken more than my nose. Adriel has it worse though.” Kieran snickered, leaving me to wonder what exactly he meant when he said ‘worse’. It wasn't surprising, though, given Adriel's more happy-go-lucky nature.

“Doesn’t it get boring?” I asked instead, trying to keep the conversation going before I was left alone again with my thoughts.

Kieran shrugged, dabbing cream onto my broken skin, effectively soothing the fire that had been burning there. I bit my lip to contain my groans.

“When you have two brothers, even breaking noses can be a fun thing,” he concluded.

When you have two brothers.

I frowned at that sentence, thinking about my friends. Most of them were my old high school friends and most of them had their own handshakes and nicknames. I had a nickname, too but none of them have ever mentioned me as their ‘best bud’ or ‘bro’ or even ‘my gal’. Not even the guys at my dealer place treated me like ‘one of them’. We were kind of like shallow friends. I hung out with them even if they treated me like an invisible person sometimes. Hearing about the guys’ close kinship directly from Kieran made me reflect on my own relationships and it wasn't pleasant.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his thumb gently stroking the top of my hand, noticing that I was slipping away.

“Nothing,” I said with a quick smile, squashing down my feelings like I had taught myself to all those years ago. I gave my other hand for him to tend to. Might as well, right? “Speaking of, where is your scary leader?”

“He’s passed out in his room. Still, I have to be real quiet about this.”

“Light sleeper or sixth sense?”

"A little of both," Kieran admitted. "Scares the shit out of us some times."

When Kieran left, my mental state was in more disarray than before he arrived. I was questioning everything: my friendships, my purpose in life, my choices, my mixed feelings for these three madmen.

Oh, no.

No.

Please don't let it be.

Was I developing Stockholm Syndrom?